For many on the left wing, Donald J. Trump has been the gift that has kept on giving, providing the media with headline after headline of absurd gaffes that, in years’ past, would’ve knocked any potential candidate from the field. Instead, this year has found that the more ridiculous Trump gets, the more responsive his voter base grows. And that’s dangerous — and it always has been. Most recently, it’s lead to the election of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as Pussy Riot’s Maria Alekhina told the Huffington Post.

Specifically, when informed that Putin had called Trump “brilliant,” Alekhina had this to say:

“When Putin came to his first term or second term, nobody [in Russia] actually thought that this is serious. Everybody was joking about it. And nobody could imagine that after five, six years, we would have a war in Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and these problems in Syria.”

Alekhina also smartly suggested the media second-guess covering the minutiae of Trump’s life, as it only encourages continued bad behavior — and also normalizes it. “It’s a very short way from joke to sad reality when you have a really crazy president speaking about breaking every moral and logic norm.”

These are words that Americans should heed, especially seeing as Trump has stated that he is “honored” to have been called brilliant by Putin, and also defends Putin against allegations that he’s clamped down on critical members of the media. The election is 11 months away, so there’s still time for America to come to its senses. But we were hoping that’d happen by now, more than six months into this race.